Jonathan Kay: Canada should stand against Washington’s failed war on drugs

Drug War: Canada should stand against Washington's failed war on drugs

Today marks the release of a new report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a reform-minded group that includes many name-brand political figures and policy-makers from across the world. One of its advisors is Canada’s own Evan Wood, a doctor who works at a hospital in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside — perhaps the best vantage point in Canada from which to observe the human toll in the war on drugs. (Please see Mr. Wood’s column in the National Post here.)

“Gang members engaged in drug supply and distribution arrive in the emergency room bloody and panicked, after being shot, stabbed or beaten,” he writes. “On the demand side, impurities and adulterants stemming from basement drug labs and uncertainties regarding potency keep emergency personnel busy responding to drug overdoses.”

No matter what one’s position on the war on drugs, it is important to state at the outset: Street drugs ruin lives. Except in rare cases (legitimate medicinal usage of marijuana by AIDS, cancer and glaucoma patients, for instance), using them is a path to addiction, impoverishment, job loss, relationship breakdown and sometimes death.

That said, Dr. Wood and his Global Commission on Drug Policy colleagues make a strong case for reform. As they point out, the negative health and economic effects caused by the war on drugs typically exceed the human cost of the drugs themselves. Here in Canada, this cost includes the horrors documented by Dr. Wood: violent street crime between warring drug syndicates, as well as the poisons contained in (unregulated) drug products sold by street pushers. But that is only a drop in the bucket compared to the far greater harms caused by the war on drugs in other nations such as Mexico and Afghanistan. The drug war has claimed 50,000 lives in Mexico alone since 2006.

Admittedly, many of those doing the killing do not make attractive poster boys for drug reform: Typically, these are hardened criminals — killing one another, and trafficking in products that will end up feeding the addictions of Canadians and American drug users. But it is the underlying economic incentives that explain this fact: From Canada’s native reserves to the Juarez, any industry that exists outside the law, and which provides massive windfall payouts for ruthless players who can kill and bribe their way into a monopoly position, is guaranteed to attract the most sadistic members of a country’s criminal class. Get rid of those incentives, and the criminals migrate away.

A June 15 New York Times Magazine feature by Patrick Radden Keefe helps put concrete numbers to this broad principle. Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, the author reports, buys its cocaine in the South American highlands for about $2,000 per kilo — but can sell the same quantity in the United States for $30,000 — which then mushrooms to $100,000 when it is divided up for street sale: a 50:1 profit ratio. Almost all of this profit consists of what might be called a “criminalization premium” — the surcharge that criminals earn when they risk imprisonment or death. In Afghanistan, where most of the world’s heroin originates, much of this profit is funneled back to the Taliban. In a sense, the war on drugs is creating the windfall profits for our enemies that, in turn, undermine the war on terror.

Of course, policy-makers have known for years that the war on drugs is a failed policy. But there are signs that the tide may finally be turning in favour of common sense.

First, there is the fact that government balance sheets are in trouble all over the Western world — especially in the United States. Prisons in California and other states are beyond their capacity. In the face of massive deficits, even many conservatives are wondering why non-violent drug offenders are consuming tens of thousands of public dollars per year languishing behind bars.

The diminishing stature of the United States on the world stage may also be playing a role. For many Latin American countries, it once was unthinkable to buck the hardline U.S. approach on drug policy — even though it was primarily Latin American soldiers and gangsters who were dying in the service of a prohibitionist policy ultimately aimed at protecting middle-class American families. But that is changing: Latin American politicians are sick and tired of being told what to do on this file. In 2009, the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico jointly declared that “the war on drugs has failed,” and called for the decriminalization of marijuana. More recently, Mexico’s Felipe Calderon, Costa Rica’s Laura Chinchilla, Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner and Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos have exhibited similar skepticism. And last week, it was announced that Uruguay might soon regulate and sell marijuana as a means to undermine criminals.

Canada should take a lead role in this movement. While it is too soon to propose legalizing, or even decriminalizing, cocaine and other hard drugs, the same is not true of marijuana. By joining with Latin American nations in championing reform in this area, we might forge an alliance for common sense that finally forces Washington to reconsider its failed war on drugs.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.